Category Archives: father

Little sister

28 Saturday Jun 2025

Posted by in daughter, father, poems, poetry, Power

≈ Comments Off on Little sister

It starts so early, this putting down of the girls.

Father of young girl with blonde locks tumbling

walks past and our brief exchange

circles around cherries:

This one doesn’t like them, he says,

She’s the picky one.

A. Who cares, this like/dislike

B. How about an understanding heart, pal?

But, no, gotta put ’em down.

Old, old story–nothing to do with blessed cherries.

I shrug–

That’s okay, nobody has to like ’em, I say–

for her,

to him.

I’ve been that girl in the family’s eyes

my whole life long.

Let them have their judgments for company.

Keep walkin’, little sister.

In her corner

18 Thursday May 2023

Posted by in anger, father, food, grief, mother, movement, pain, poems, poetry, story, water, words

≈ Comments Off on In her corner

She sits in her corner, turning page

after paper page…

Held by two walls, floor and wood ceiling,

she removes herself

from still more broken connection.

Out there, nothing but loss.

In here, with pictures and stories, friends and

a giving, participatory world.

With father gone for work, back for dinner,

home only for irritation, judgment and sleep,

With mother avoiding pain through worry,

busyness and food,

anger unthinkable,

The girl is left knowing–

beyond the material,

she’s on her own.

Books act as balm

until, later, distance and exploration

return her to the early grief

of being alone

surrounded by people.

The nectar soothes her broken heart,

tear by reclaimed tear.

Without reserve

28 Friday May 2021

Posted by in father, honoring, learning, Loss, movement, pain, poems, poetry, stillness

≈ Comments Off on Without reserve

My father,

he was of the sort willing

and able

to kick me out of the family.

His threat came three times.

Not once, or, oops, twice,

but three times that cruelty was uttered, even written,

knives thrown not in spirit alone, but in substance:

To a child that is survival at stake.

And belonging.

And…so much and…

My hands tremble and my heart pounds with

the memory of it.

I grieve for her, the young one who had to stand there

and take it.

He forgot. I couldn’t.

His violence lives in me. I work with the wounds

daily.

What he was never given he could not give.

What I was never given, I intend to learn.

Some days it is a story, a living aspect

of history.

Other days I must rise up, in frightened fury,

to say no.

Absolutely not.

What family there is that is mine,

wherever they be,

their fullness of heart and vision and being

reside within and around me,

and my hands and heart can return the gifts

I have been given

in stillness and

without reserve.